


Long Live the Queen

by mangocianamarch



Series: Le Livre de L'abondance par La Dame Marciana [5]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU in which Dis inherits the throne, Alternate Canon, Battle of Five Armies, Canonical Character Death, Dead Durinsfolk, F/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangocianamarch/pseuds/mangocianamarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Battle has come and gone. Erebor has been won, but at great cost. The throne, long empty, shall now fall to the last of the living of the direct blood line of Durin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Live the Queen

**Author's Note:**

> WOOPS, I DIS/DWALIN FICCED. Not only did I Dis/Dwalin fic, I SAD Dis/Dwalin ficced. Not only did I sad Dis/Dwalin fic, I POST-BOFA-THORIN-AND-THE-BOYS-ARE-DEAD sad Dis/Dwalin ficced.
> 
> This story exists because Dis/Dwalin is a pairing I didn't know I shipped until I started shipping it. It also exists because I am of the firm belief, despite what Tolkien might have said about how Dwarf women were treated and regarded, that Dis, if she were alive, should have assumed the throne instead of Dain. And also because it's my headcanon that Kili's biological father is actually Dwalin.
> 
> I am FAR from apologetic, and just hope that you enjoy.
> 
> Don't worry, it won't stay sad. Also, don't expect it to be long. It shouldn't be more than 10 chapters, I think.

Rocks. Ruins. Blood. Wounds. Death.

This is not the kingdom she grew up in. This is not the home she remembers. But then again, she should not have expected it to be.

The dragon’s stench and marks are everywhere, and Dis half-expects the great lizard to poke its head around every corner she turns. She knows it’s gone, but the sense of dread has not left. Her body remembers all too well the terror and the panic of when it had first attacked, and her ears still ring with the screams and shouts of the court.

Dis is hardly aware of where her feet are taking her, and suddenly she’s in the utterly ruined throne room, the bridge wrecked, the throne itself hardly recognizable. The wall where the niche for her grandfather’s beloved jewel is on the floor. Before she knows it, she takes a step forward –

_“Go!”_

_“Thor--”_

_“Now is not the time for arguments, sister!”_

_“But --”_

_“Dis, I swear to Mahal, if you don’t leave now...”_

The memory is physically painful. Dis gasps for breath, her heart racing, her blood pounding. She shakes her head to clear it, and goes no further. In fact, she backs up, wanting to be as far from the room as possible.

Further into the mountain she walks, and perhaps she should be worrying about restoration, of how long it would take and how many people they would need, if they can somehow convince help from the Elves and the Men of Dale, if perhaps some of the displaced can move in even while construction is ongoing. But her mind refuses to let her move on just yet, and all she can see are the ghosts of a life past, and the phantoms of a life that could have been.

Thorin’s room.

How has she ended up here?

It’s more of a cavern now than anything else. As children, they had enjoyed some moments together, but as Thorin came into his own, he had begun to keep to himself, and she had found herself missing his company. Often in the nights, she would come to him, and though they said nothing to each other, he would let her brush through his hair, braid his beard, ease his tension until they both fell asleep.

Here Thorin sleeps again, but Dis knows he will no longer wake.

In the center of what is left of Thorin’s room Thorin is lain. His body rests on a slabs placed on top of each other, and four torches stand to form a rectangle of light around him. His armor, destroyed, sits on the floor, at the foot of his makeshift bed. Dis expected him to look bloodied and rent, but he lies there clean, and as though peaceful in his sleep.

Dis’s steps are quiet on the stone floor as she approaches her brother’s body. She can already feel the wet heat of tears in her eyes, her breathing laboured as she fights to hold them back. “No tears,” Thorin had told her before he had left home with her sons, “We might be gone long, but we _will_ be reunited again, in the home that has waited for us to return and reclaim it. And when the time comes, I would see you stand beside me, as I once did for our grandfather when he ruled. Believe in this, sister. Believe in our cause, and see your faith rewarded.”

It seems an eternity ago now. She had smiled for him, and had fought the tears back then. She tries again now, to do as he had once told. But as she lays a hand on both of his, clasped on his chest and wearing the rings of their family, she fails in rather spectacular fashion.

“How dare you,” she murmurs, and she thinks her voice echoes around the room, “How dare you do this to me? You lied to me, brother. You said I would stand _with_ you, not _for_ you. By your side, you said. Not in your place. How dare you, Thorin?”

She cries, and cries hard, her fingers gripping at cold hands that cannot return her touch. Her despair courses through her, and bends her nearly double at the edge of Thorin’s resting place, her tears falling freely into his clothing. Where once Thorin might’ve reached out and stroked her hair until she calmed, no gentle touch comes from her eldest brother now.

“Come back to me,” she hears herself plead, “Brother, come back. You can’t be dead, you just...you _cannot_ be...You can’t leave me...”

“My queen...”

Dis looks to where the door would have been, and her heart stops, but now with relief. She relinquishes her hold on Thorin and rushes to the source of the soft greeting.

“Dwalin,” she breathes, and his strong arms catch her and engulf her, holding her in place as she sobs into him. Her hands ball themselves into fists in his clothing, and it is his hand now that calms her as they stroke down her back and her hair even as he shushes her gently.

“I told him,” Dis weeps, inconsolable, “I warned him not to go, I told him. And now he’s gone, and I...Dwalin, I cannot...”

“Hush,” Dwalin murmurs, “Hush, now, my queen...”

“He was a fool,” Dis continues, all but tearing herself from Dwalin’s hold to aim her tirade at her brother, “You were a _fool_ , Thorin! You wouldn’t listen to reason!”

“He wanted to take the mountain back,” Dwalin reminds her quietly.

“He wanted to chase a dream!” Dis replies, “A dream that should have died with our father!”

“He wanted to give our people their home back.”

“We _had_ a home!”

“It was not ours to have, and ours was not the dragon’s to keep.”

“Even now, you agree with him,” Dis accuses, shaking her head at her old friend, “He cannot hear you anymore, Dwalin, he cannot retaliate if you disagree.”

“But I do not,” Dwalin answers, “And I never did. He wanted to return to you what once was yours. And he succeeded. We all did.”

“But at what price?” Dis asks, despair weakening her voice as she looks upon the pale face of her brother, “At what price, Dwalin? My grandfather’s life? My father’s? Both of my brothers’ lives? It hardly seems equal to me.”

“It was a price he was willing to pay,” says Dwalin, voice still so uncharacteristically calm as he approaches her again, “Yes, he chased a dream, but it was not of gold. It was of home and family. In times when he felt his resolve faltering, he would come to me and speak of you, memories of the childhood he watched you have, and that which he missed. Thorin regretted much, but not being a better brother was perhaps one of the heaviest weights on his heart. His drive was always you. As you were mine.”

He reaches out to her, but she steps out of his reach. “My sons,” she says instead, “He took my sons with him, but they did not greet me when I arrived.”

At last, Dwalin seems to have run out of words, but Dis cannot count it as a victory, not when a shadow passes over his face.

“Dwalin,” she asks slowly, “Where are my sons?”

Dwalin says nothing, barely able to look at her.

“Where are they, Dwalin?” she asks him again, her blood running cold, “Where are Fili and Kili?”

Dwalin hangs his head, looking off to the side as he swallows.

“...With their Uncle.”

Time stops. The air around them dies. Dis’s blood seems to have frozen over, and she stands slack and staring off into space, her jaw ajar. She forgets how to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” Dwalin mutters, reaching out to her again.

She meets his eyes, and it takes far too much effort to speak again.

“Take me to them.”

Fili and Kili have been laid in the bedchamber that had once been Dis’s own. Much like for their Uncle, flat stones had been piled on top of each other and stabilized, and there they rest, beside each other as they always had been. They have but two torches, as opposed to Thorin’s four, but the light falls across their young faces, and Dis can see a long gash along one side of her eldest, and shallow slashes as if from an animal’s claws on her youngest. And yet they lie as peaceful as their Uncle, and it seems almost to Dis as if Kili might even be smiling. His face had always seemed more joyful than Fili’s, but Fili’s laugh had always been louder.

But no longer will Dis hear that laughter, nor see that smile, and the thought makes her knees buckle. She nearly falls, but Dwalin catches her. Her eyes stare forward at her sons, and she finds herself wishing that this was just another one of their nasty pranks that she would be able to punish later once order was restored. She wishes they would suddenly rise and yell “Surprise, Mother!” and that she could run to them and hold them, telling them what idiots they were for giving her such a fright.

She waits. She actually waits. But nothing happens.

Still, she pushes at Dwalin gently, who understands and releases her carefully. Her feet feel weak as she walks towards her sleeping sons, the only ones she has ever had.

“They found Thorin wounded,” Dwalin narrates in a low voice, “They did their damnedest best to protect him, but the numbers overwhelmed them. By the time I had found them, Kili was gone. Fili was holding him, but he was wounded far beyond any help that could be given. He was apologizing to Kili, he said he had promised to take care of him. ‘Tell Mother I’m sorry,’ he told me, ‘Tell her I tried.’”

Dis is shaking her head, as if denial would make his words untrue. But now, at the head of where they rest, it is all too clear that she would not have her sons back. She starts to cry again, perhaps harder now than she had cried for her brother.

“You would have been so proud of them,” Dwalin says.

“Hearing how they fought and fell would bring me no comfort, Dwalin,” Dis tells him through her tears.

“No,” Dwalin replies, “It would not. But perhaps hearing how they held their own, how they gave their Uncle everything they had, how they believed in the Quest and what it could bring, and how they took care of each other to the very end and proved themselves worthy of each other might.”

“I want to hear all this from their own mouths,” Dis weeps, “I want them to tell me all this themselves, just so I could see their faces light up and hear their voices once more. I want them back, Dwalin. I want my sons back.”

She falls to her knees, and buries her face in her hands as her sobbing grows ever more uncontrollable. And though Dwalin plants himself on the floor beside her and holds her to him, she has never felt more alone in all her life. 

 

 

 


End file.
